Tag Archives: Jupiter

One of my goals this year is to take some astro pics of various things – moon, planets, stars, DSOs. While some people take shots of the sky with just their cameras, in my limited experience, there are four ways to capture images through a telescope.

1. DSLR mounted on the back of the scope (for my setup anyway), looking through the scope;

2. Webcam in the eye-piece;

3. Point-and-shoot camera mounted on the back of the scope and looking through the eyepiece; or,

4. Smartphone mounted at the eyepiece.

Regular Astrophotography

When people talk about astrophotography (AP), they normally mean option 1 or 2.

Option 1 is considered the best option by most amateurs, not because you get the best visuals, but just a combination of cost and quality. DSLRs are awesome machines with proven technology to capture photons. You can even get ones that have modified sensors explicitly to improve capturing night skies with limited light.

Option 2, the webcam, is great if you can afford the high-end cameras but even the lowest end requires another piece of equipment — a laptop to capture what the webcam is seeing. Lots of people debate Option 1 and 2, and while you might get agreement that “technologically” the high-end webcams will produce better output, you’ll likely never get agreement on what is better or easier to work with for a given individual or at a given price-point.

Beginner’s Astrophotography

Option 3 for a point-and-shoot camera was created by people who wanted to take some photos but didn’t have a webcam/laptop or a DSLR. There are little adapters that you mount the camera on, hold it in place over the eyepiece, and bam, you can take a photo. It is, however, highly finicky to adjust everything and get in place to take a shot. I never had much luck with it myself, but I gave it a try, just as I tried the other two above as well. Some people found it just as easy to hold it steady above the EP as anything else.

Option 4 — the smartphone — was basically a simple modification of Option 3 and has grown out of the desire of many people to do exactly what they are doing for regular photography instead of using DSLRs … take shots with the camera they already have on them rather than lugging something else.

Early adopters simply held the smartphone up to the eyepiece, and snapped shots. I’ve done this myself, and got a couple of okay early shots of the moon, but anything else was beyond me. I just can’t hold it steady enough. I also don’t have the patience.

Moderate adopters bought simple adapters that came out from various manufacturers and basically gives a series of little clamps to lock on to your phone in one part and an eye-piece in another. Sounds simple enough, but it’s misleading. For one thing, all phones are different sizes so the phone clamps have to be adjustable i.e. not exactly perfectly sized or lined up. Particularly because some phones put the camera in the corner of the back, others put it in the centre, others in the opposite corner, etc. So after you mount the phone to the adapter, you have to centre a mounting ring over your eyepiece to get it lined up (most newbies make the same mistakes I have done which is to try and centre the camera over the eyepiece rather than first centreing the eyepiece ring over the phone’s camera port, and then adding the EP last).

Current adopters are excited by seeing some of the great work that is out there (like Andrew Symes’ on Twitter — @FailedProtostar) and seeing just what is possible. For these adopters, and to some extent the others, you quickly divide into two camps: iOS users and Android users.

iOS — Those with recent iPhones are blessed with two things. First, the iPhone cameras are good, solid cameras. Are some of the new Google Pixel, or Samsung cameras better? Doesn’t matter, really, the point is that the iPhone cameras are good and have decent abilities to alter the options/settings since night-time photography at a telescope eyepiece is not your “default” setting for any common camera. However, they get a second benefit. There’s an app called Night Cap(ture). It exploits the benefits of the iPhone’s abilities to the max, and just about everyone who uses iPhone for night shots don’t even bother to try anything else. It’s the default go to app, and produces awesome results.

Android — Within the Android world, all the cameras are different: some support API1, some API2; some have great cameras, some have good; some let you play with settings, some don’t; some will save in RAW, most won’t. But even without the variations in the hardware, there is no clear winner in the app world on the scale of Night Cap. If you go by popularity, probably Camera FV-5 comes the closest, and it has lots of power. Although it doesn’t include a video mode, that’s a separate app. Sigh. Anyway, the point is, it’s just not as robust or streamlined as the iOS option. Just about everyone out there who is doing AWESOME stuff out of the gate is using iPhone. Despite the larger Android market share, I would say “awesome smartphone AP” is about 90% iOS and 10% Android.

Enough context, what am I doing?

I tried webcam stuff, but it was something I pushed to the backburner after a few tries, with the intent to focus on visual observing until I felt that I had that well-covered. Five years later, I don’t have it nailed, although the alignment process is fixed. I tried DSLR and have all the parts, just haven’t quite nailed the process and setup yet, but again, put it to the backburner. The point-and-shoot option is still on my list once I nail smartphones as I would like at some point to take four images of the same thing(s) with all four just to show what I can get with a bit of practice and minimal skill.

Which leaves me in the beginner’s AP world of snapping photos at the eyepiece with my Android phone running Camera FV-5. I tried a bunch of other apps, none were even close to giving me what I want on my Samsung Note 4. I can’t save in RAW, but I’m fine with JPGs. I’m aiming more for souvenir web photos than printing enlargements or giant murals. I’m getting a few shots, but nothing spectacular, and it’s hard to figure out where I need to make my improvements. There are x steps in the process.

Mount the phone in the bracket.

Adjust the phone to the right height and angle of the eyepiece ring.

Find an object in the scope.

Mount the eyepiece ring over the eyepiece, thus mounting the camera.

Adjust focus of scope.

Adjust settings for camera.

Snap the photo or record the video.

Step one: Mount the phone in the bracket

That sounds like it should be easy enough, right? Except here’s the deal. I have a Meade smartphone adapter and it basically consists of a “U-shaped” holder, you lie the phone flat in it, and then squeeze the U thinner to pinch the sides of the phone. A small screw knob (1) underneath tightens to hold it perfectly in place. Except there’s a small variance with the next step.

(from bintel.com.au)

Step two: Adjust the phone to the right height and angle of the eyepiece ring.

So here’s the deal…the eyepiece ring has an inner bracket that clamps on to the eyepiece and an outer bracket that connects to the phone bracket. A screw knob (2) holds them together.

To align the phone at the right height above where the eyepiece will be, you use screw knob 2 which allows the phone bracket to move up and down in height about half a centimeter. Screw knob 1, which holds the U together, also allows the horizontal phone to move forward / back and left / right in the bracket to allow it to centre itself over the eyepiece ring.

In other words, you have to keep both knob 1 and knob 2 loose enough to allow movement but tight enough that everything stays together. Grr…

(from Amazon JP)

Step three: Find an object in the scope *

I confess, this is NOT the next step in my process, but I’ll talk about that later.

Usually, this is the normal next step. Pretty straightforward. Locate something in the scope that you want to image, put it in focus, get it tracking if you have a tracking scope.

Again, this is not my usual order, but the standard one. With EP in the scope, and the camera phone mounted on the adapter, you then place the adapter on the eye-piece, tighten it up, and it’s installed. You hope.

Step five: Adjust focus of scope

When you did your initial focus, it was to see the object in the EP. Now that you’ve got a camera a bit above the EP lens, you need to tweak your focus a bit. A friend uses a magnifying glass to make sure his stars are pinpoint sharp. Others eyeball it on the screen as they adjust the focus knob.

Step six: Adjust settings for camera

If the camera isn’t already set for the right settings — infinity focus, duration and ISO — then you can set them now.

Step seven: Snap the photo or record the video

With everything looking perfect on the screen, time to record the video or snap the photo. Since most phones will shake a bit when you touch them, lots of people use a 2 second timer delay for the shaking to stop or a remote trigger or even voice controls.

* My modified steps

I essentially swap steps three and four. Normally you use the EP to find an object and then mount the camera on top. In my case, I have an extra EP, so I first mount the EP I intend to use to the camera and THEN find an object with the other EP. When I am ready, I swap the EP+camera for the spotting EP. Just saves a few steps on the fly and increases the likelihood that my EP will stay attached.

How am I doing?

Not that well. Way back when I started using the adapter last summer, I could get an image like this:

This month, I was lucky to get this:

I tried for Jupiter. Last July, I got this:

This May, I was lucky to get this:

I fiddled, I adjusted, I tried again:

Some people have been doing video and converting, so I did two 10s videos, ran them through an astroimaging software to process them for stacking and then through an actual stacking program, plus converted to JPG. This is the best I have so far:

I moved on to DSOs and got nothing. Totally black images. I checked the sensor to see if it was even registering stars, and I managed to capture Castor:

But it is hardly pinpoint and there is nothing showing around it? Seems odd to me.

So I’m messing up somewhere in the seven steps to get from A to Z. Just not sure where yet. I’ll keep trying.

So I posted earlier that my astro season has kicked off, and I’m good to go. With the news that Jupiter was in opposition this week (the closest it will come to Earth all year, hence LOOK NOW for your best view), I thought, “Well, yeah, I want to set up”. And because it’s a PLANET, not some dark sky object, I can do it from my backyard.

So on Tuesday, I was in a hurry to setup before Venus disappeared behind a house, and I wanted to show my wife and son, so I set up the scope on our deck. Anyone who knows scopes knows a deck is a bad idea unless it’s cement. Otherwise they jiggle if anyone walks. Hard to get vibrations out, but whatever. Anyway, got it set up, quick solar system alignment on Venus, good to go, showed the family, all good.

Then I did a quick sky tour, realigned on Procyon and Capella, not bad, and then I started doing a quick sky tour while I waited for Jupiter to come up over a house. Not awesome, but then again, I hadn’t done ANY OF THE PROPER ALIGNMENT THINGS I know I need to do.

Did I put on the vibration suppression pads? No.

Did I set up on actual ground and not a deck that bounces with every move? No.

Did I put in my most accurate time, location, etc.? Nah, general ballpark.

Did I level the scope? Nope.

Did I choose two good stars fairly far apart in the sky with different altitudes? Nope.

Did I do a careful alignment for RIGHT/UP? Yes! I’m not a neanderthal. Well, I mean, I didn’t do the proper doughnut thing to align or use a reticle, I just eyeballed it, but I did do RIGHT/UP at the end.

Anyway, I really wanted to get to some astrophotography of Jupiter. Wasn’t awesome but got a white blob. Wasn’t really expecting anything.

But it was promising enough that I started my “new project” anyway. I have my wife’s old iPhone, and everything I’ve read says iPhones tend to focus better on EPs than Android for their camera design, and the best software on the market seems to be Night Cap(ture) which is only available for iOS. So I decided I would repurpose the phone that is sitting unused, basically an iTouch / iPod at this point, and use it as my dedicated astro camera.

I charged it enough to boot, and discovered I couldn’t go any further without a SIM card. What? I don’t want it as a phone, why do I need a SIM card???? Dang it. Researched ways to bypass, and while there are lots of sites that say you can do it, one of the FIRST steps they say is to borrow another SIM card. Umm, which part of “I DON’T HAVE A SIM CARD DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”, which is pretty much 75% of the comments on those articles too. Or I could jailbreak it. Or I could find the original SIM card. I called one of the repair places that fixed my tablet, talked to the tech, and he basically said any SIM card for an iPhone should work, and my wife DOES have a new one, soooo…anyway, I tried my Android SIM card first, no joy in Mudville. My wife’s sister had used the phone at one point for a camera on some trip, so she got it working somehow, and turns out she did have a/the card for it, but well, I was impatient. I popped out my wife’s card from her current iPhone, and guess what? They’re totally different sizes. Great. What the hell. I popped it in, and tried to put it in the card slot anyway. No way this should work. It doesn’t even “fit” in right…smaller than the old one.

And the phone moved to the next step. While I held it in place, it let me activate the phone again, register with the app store, all of it. Then I put the SIM card back in my wife’s phone, rebooted, all good there too. Onward!

Found the app store, connected to wifi, went to NIGHT CAP, tried to download, it needed a code from my wife’s account, annoying but manageable, all good to go. Then it tells me NIGHT CAP requires iOS version 10+. The iPhone 4S? Limited to v.7. No joy in mudville.

I tried it in the scope on Wednesday night anyway, and the controls seem just too basic with the stock camera app. Can’t change ANY settings. Sigh. Okay, well then. On to the Android phone.

The best app for the Android is apparently Camera FV-5. I downloaded it, got set up, mounted the Android phone, played with the layout and setup of the physical adapter to figure out the “best way” to align. Went out to the scope, and couldn’t see anything on the screen.

Now I have a good option for this…often the problem is that the scope isn’t “focused” for that EP, and when you do get set up, you can’t go back to look through the EP as it’s now mounted to the phone. So the easy solution was to pick up two cheap EPs at the same magnitude as the other two I want to use…a 25mm and a 15mm. So I can focus with the first 25mm, get it lined up, and seeing “something”, and in the meantime, I can mount the second 25mm to the phone adapter. When I’m ready to take a pic, I just need to swap EPs in and out. I can do the same at the 15mm level if I ever get that good at the basics.

I couldn’t get ANYTHING to work at 15mm. I switched out to 25mm, and again, I was having no end of challenges to get it lined up in the EP. I’ve done this before with the moon, with no trouble, and even on Tuesday night, I could get SOMETHING. Not last night, not at all. Now part of it is a challenge figuring out the app settings, mainly around three parts:

White balance — when you do night shots of the sky using your DSLR, most of the astrophotography sites suggest the tungsten setting (good to get rid of flourescent light normally) as it balances things better. You might have to soften or adjust lighting afterwards, but a good option. Yet I’m not taking a shot of the night sky directly, this is a shot of the EYEPIECE basically. No idea what is the best setting, and my tweaks weren’t producing any noticeable improvements.

Light metering — Which option to use for this is almost anyone’s guess…balanced across the image, focused on the dots that are the planets, moons and stars, or something else entirely?

Focus — for DSLRs on the night sky, you generally want it at “infinity” to be in focus for star points. But this isn’t the sky, again, it is of the EYEPIECE that is basically millimeters from the camera. Do you go Auto? Macro? Infinity? As with metering and balance, tweaking wasn’t giving me any better results.

I posted a question on Cloudy Nights in their Astrophotography area, but no guidance yet.

So I said “screw it”, I’ll just do a bunch of visual observing. And hey, maybe I can try out the Ultrablock that is supposed to knock out man-made light pollution. If it does, I have no way of knowing. My alignment was so far off that at one point, I told it to go to Jupiter, and it pointed to a spot where Jupiter had been almost 90 minutes earlier! It had aligned previously, but then I changed something, replaced a star somewhere and obviously screwed up. Because when I told it to go to Jupiter, and it was off, I manually adjusted to Jupiter’s real location and told it to align again. It thought about it for about half a second and said, “Nope, that’s too big an adjustment for me, not going to do it, try again tomorrow, ya lazy git who didn’t bother to follow the right alignment procedure at the start!”. Okay, maybe the wording was something like “unable to adjust”, but that’s what it meant.

Good thing the star party is tomorrow. I need to do some serious observing with the RIGHT alignment process from the start.

Saturday April 21 was International Astronomy Day, and while I held out a bit of hope I would make it to one of the daytime / solar star parties in Gloucester, I didn’t actually get going until after supper, just in time to head to the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum where RASC Ottawa was hosting a night-time star party. Not quite the big setup of our monthly summer parties in Carp, but still a decent number of people. In addition, my friend Rennie was going with his family to get used to setting up his scope. He has the same scope as mine, and we’re hoping he can jumpstart his learning and success curve a bit by piggy-backing off my now working alignment process.

As the first time of the season, I have to admit, I was pretty slow setting up. It was like I’d forgotten how ANYTHING attached to ANYTHING else. Surprisingly, I hadn’t forgotten any parts. I keep forgetting to make myself a bullet-proof checklist that I can double-check before leaving to make sure I have the main things (eyepieces, tube, mount, chair, and battery) as well as the extras (filters, bug spray — thankfully not yet!, etc.). Most importantly, I remembered a key astronomy tool — warm footwear.

It is incredible how fast cement can suck the heat right out of your shoes or light boots. I wore my full winter boots, and after 3 hours, my feet were done. But the three hours went well. I helped Rennie align his TelRad (the raw star finder to get you in the vicinity of stuff, like a spotting scope) and then we used Stellarium to help us find a good star to start with for our alignment. We saw Venus (white blob) and Venus slightly filtered (dull white blob), and of course the Moon. There were some public members and when they found out I was the Star Party Coordinator, I got a lot of questions. Rennie’s family and friends included a bunch of little ones, and they were tuckered out and cold before too long.

I stuck around until about 11:00, mostly just long enough for two things. First, I wanted to see Jupiter and it wasn’t yet above the trees. Second, I wanted to try out my new-to-me filter wheel. Essentially you put four or five filters in it (actually usually four, leaving the fifth one empty to have an “unfiltered” view), and then you can simply rotate the dial to switch filters easily. I took four that were great for Venus — but by the time I got around to breaking them out, seeing how it all worked, Venus was long gone. I tried them on Jupiter just to see, and one was just okay, but that was more about the angle than anything else. I also tried them on the moon, and one I quite liked just because it took the glare off. But there are separate ones for that type of reduced brightness, and I hadn’t planned on trying those, so hadn’t set up for it.

Most people were gone or packing up by the time I left, but it was one cold night.

Which of course meant Rennie and I had to try again on Sunday night at the Fred Lossing Observatory! Rennie got there before me, and he and his friend Philip had set up the big scope (there’s an 18″ scope there you can use, if you get trained and pay a fee). I just wanted to observe through my scope. It’s a bit of a hike out there, and I need to wrap my head around going more regularly. Nice dark skies, way better than anything I have access to closer. And there’s a warming room and portable toilet if needed. Still, it’s a 45 minute drive. Here’s a look at the warming room on the left and observatory with a roll-off roof, followed by a shot of the setup of the big scope (photos compliments of Rennie).

When I arrived, Venus was about to disappear behind some trees, but I really wanted to try my filter wheel. There was a nip in the air, and I thought about just observing with Rennie and Philip for a bit and not setting up, but I mean, really, I’d driven all that way, right?

But with Venus about 2 minutes from disappearing, I wouldn’t get set up in time. No problem, Rennie’s scope is IDENTICAL to mine, more or less. So I took my eyepiece, and my filter wheel, and with Rennie’s permission, I tried out the colour filters on Venus in his scope. According to the more informed people online, the best filters to try on Venus are 25 Red, 38A Dark Blue, 47 Violet, and, to a lesser extent, 12 Yellow. I tried all four. Yellow and red were interesting, but I wouldn’t say I saw much more than slightly less bright white. The Dark Blue and Violet just changed the colour to weird (particularly the blue), and I felt I was losing detail, not gaining it. But, again, it was about to disappear behind the trees so I didn’t have a lot of time — in fact, after Rennie and Philip looked, Venus was gone.

I managed to get set up after that and I was reasonably happy with my new cases for accessories. I did a new case and layout for my eye pieces and filters, and the two turned out okay. Not perfect, but way better than I initially hoped.

I even have a bit of room to expand, which is handy. Of course, now that I’ve seen Rennie’s setup for his actual scope stuff, I’m thinking more ambitiously for that too! 🙂 I’m going to check out Home Depot this weekend for some suitable cases to use. But I digress.

I used Stellarium again, aligning on Betelgeuse and Arcturus. I totally forgot that I have a “recommended list” for my scope and that April’s are Procyon and Regulus. But the other two worked fine. I hadn’t really planned out my observing, mainly just wanted more practice getting setup, aligned, and observing.

Now, one of the nice parts of having a “go to” computerized scope is that you can also do a Sky Tour as part of the setup. It basically has a database of 40K+ objects in the sky, and based on what you enter as your coordinates and alignment stars, time of day, date, etc., it knows what are the best things to see in the sky at that time. I’ve done sky tours in the past when I didn’t have good alignment and most of the time I didn’t “see” anything in the eyepiece. It just wasn’t aligned well enough, so when I went to look, and bearing in mind I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to see since I hadn’t seen it before, I didn’t have a lot of success.

Tonight, by contrast, was relatively awesome. Most good amateur astronomers would NOT do what I did … I looked at probably 75 objects in about two hours. When you include slew time, that equates to about a minute an object. Sometimes less. Plus I was occasionally taking notes on a white screen phone, totally destroying my night vision repeatedly. But perfection wasn’t the goal, I just wanted to see if my alignment let me see stuff worth seeing. And I confess, in part, to note some of those things so that when I’m at a star party or out with my family, I can say, “Hey, let’s look at M82, the Cigar Galaxy, it’s kind of cool.” Right now, I feel I’m almost looking at things randomly based on others recommendations, I rarely have a set plan. I know what I need to do, but just haven’t gotten to that point yet. Tonight I wanted to see Venus and Jupiter, and I toyed with the idea of some photos of the moon on my smartphone, but instead I decided to concentrate on the pre-programmed Star Tour.

Some highlights (with full inventory at the bottom):

Double Cluster — Looks best in 32mm for brightness and fitting everything in view;

M82 — Cigar galaxy, I saw it! but more zoom = less light;

Ghost of Jupiter –awesome sight, almost bluish, 25mm;

M104 — Sombrero Galaxy, I saw it, with more zoom = less light;

M53 — Bright globular cluster, 17mm;

M57 — Ring Nebula, visible, little colour, 17mm;

M3 — Bright globular cluster, 17mm;

M5 — Rose Cluster, globular, bright at 17mm;

M13 — Hercules globular cluster, bright at 17mm;

M92 — Globular, bright at 17mm;

M52 — Another Salt and Pepper?, open star but bright;

Overall, I saw 23 Messier objects, however briefly, and made up the list of 11 top highlights to see again. Preferably in not so rushed a way.

By this time, Jupiter was just edging over and peeking through the trees, but we were all pretty cold, so decided to hang out in the warming room for ten minutes. I was relatively okay for warmth outside with layers, but even my boots were hitting their limits at the three-hour mark. But back out we went and saw Jupiter and the moon. By then, it was time for me to pack it in. As happy as I was with everything, I was cold, tired, and it was a school night, as they say. Plus I still had to drive 45 minutes back to home. Fortunately, I park in a garage, so when I got home, I could just crash and leave everything in the car overnight. Definitely looking forward to some warmer weather.

Philip and Rennie stuck around a bit more, still experimenting with a laptop connected to his scope and some astrophotography with the big scope. They managed to capture the following shots of the moon and Jupiter, which was pretty reflective of what I saw before I bailed.

We’ll take it as a first night (or second night) out with the scope for the season. Rennie wants to play with some AP in future outings (using my smartphone attachment or my webcam, or both), and I want to nail down a list of good objects to view and at which magnitude. Plus keep playing a bit with my filters.

The full list of my observations for the night is below, but until next time,

Catalog of Observations

Eta ant — double, okay at 17mm;

Almach — double, okay at 17mm;

Double Cluster — Looks best in 32mm for brightness and fitting everything in view;

I posted awhile ago about restarting my hobby (50by50: Re-start my astronomy hobby (#04)), and some other posts over the last couple of years about trying to figure out proper alignments and use of my Celestron 8SE scope. This past weekend, we were heading to my wife’s family’s cottage near Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon, and I was debating whether or not to take the scope. Their property has a lot of trees so Eastern views are out, but if I put my scope next to the lake, I have a pretty good SW view.

I hemmed, I hawed. Then I pulled up the Clear Sky Chart for Fenelon Falls (who knew there was even one for the area?), and the decision was made — every indicator for Saturday night was off the charts. I’m usually doing viewing in the Ottawa area and lucky to get medium predictions for quality (3/5), while the one for Saturday in Fenelon had 4s and even 5s! I wasn’t organized to take all my stuff with me, but how could I not? It delayed our departure by half an hour as I crammed every thing in after finding it all, and we went.

About 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, I started setting up the scope with my solar filter. It was fun to see the sun spots, and Jacob and Andrea saw them too. I confess, though, that sun spots are not the most exciting thing to see. Andrea’s father and aunt took a peek, as did her uncle.

As night fell, I was a bit excited. I was debating using the built-in settings or the wifi adapter that connects to my phone or tablet, all exciting options.

Right up until my Celestron power source died. Not for any other reason than the fact that I wasn’t planning on going, grabbed it and didn’t grab the charger, and there wasn’t much left to power the scope. I ended up putting the mini tank away, popping open the mount and inserting 8 batteries for the night. Not the best of solutions, but it works. Back in business.

Except my phone wasn’t fully charged either — one of the downsides of being in a remote area with dark skies is your little phone may not connect, and if it’s like mine, and trying to repeatedly connect without success, it eventually dies during the day. Tried running my tablet app, couldn’t connect, and then it said my app wasn’t valid. It is, and I reinstalled it later just fine, but wouldn’t work.

So I tried the hand set alignment, and it failed, but I expected that. On to regular star hopping.

Except I was not very enthusiastic. That amazing clear night that was forecast? Total crap. There was haze EVERYWHERE. Maybe drifting from BC, but looked more like heat hazes. Definitely in the west up almost 20-30 degrees and even Saturn and Jupiter were hazy. I showed off Saturn and Jupiter to Andrea and Jacob, and they were far cries from what we had seen even in June. I showed Andrea’s mom and aunt Saturn, but it wasn’t awesome. I did manage to show Arcturus and Antares, even if I couldn’t remember their names at the time, and they loved them because they actually were twinkling.

It quieted down, I was left to my own devices. So I pulled up a planetarium app, found the names for Antares and Arcturus. Looked at them again. And then I started looking for Messier objects, which I almost never have much luck with on my own. Just not organized enough to figure it out, and although I have a Go To scope, that’s kind of cheating.

But I surprised myself. I found M3. While it may be a nice globular cluster that seems super bright when you look at it on pages on the internet, it always looks like a light faint smudgy to me. Still, I found it, on my own, didn’t use my go to function, just star hopped to it. I was a bit “lucky” more than skilled, but hey, it counts. 🙂

As I mentioned earlier, I have my Celestron NexStar 8SE setup finally working (Finally learning with the Celestron NexStar 8SE). So last Friday, when the night was promising good seeing, I headed over to the local park that I frequently use for viewing. I’ll confess it isn’t a “great” location in terms of light pollution. It’s just off Knoxdale and you can see streelights about half a block away, plus I’m in the middle of a suburb. It’s darker than most areas, and I have decent horizons, but that is in comparison to most suburban areas, not against a true dark sky site. But it’s close and I wanted to test the setup.

I did my new routine — vibration suppression pads, wifi link, app on phone, 17.3mm regular + 12 mm illuminated cross-hair reticle for centreing and aligning, stars far apart. When it finished, and the alignment was successful, I started with simply telling the scope to show me the moon. It was disappearing behind a streetlight and a couple of houses, but it was a few blocks away before the horizon interfered, so it worked well enough to show me the waxing 4 or 5 day old moon.

I tried Venus next, and the computer told me “no”, claiming it was below the horizon. It wasn’t easy to see but it was NOT below the horizon. I moved manually, saw it briefly, pretty close to horizon so as to be practically gone, but not completely. Good slew settings to protect scope from going too low, no complaints here. Tried Jupiter next and it was pretty accurate. However, while there was supposed to be way above average seeing for the night, the haze before Jupiter was preventing seeing the bands clearly for more than a few seconds before they would waver. I name-checked Saturn just for fun, but then it was time to move on to a real test of the new setup.

Arcturus was my first stop. One of the top ten brightest stars, and 100+ times as bright as our own sun, it was easy to see why it is a popular stop for sky tours. A red giant, it did appear orange/red although the brightness hides some of it.

Next up was Vega. Blue / white? Yep, no problem. Very tall in the sky, not surprising the science geeks calculated it as the former North star. With Vega already located, I hopped quickly over to nearby Altair to check it out. Not quite as bright, but still easily found. I added Tarazed to the mix, but mostly just saw it as white, not the reported orange-ish colour.

But stars have always been relatively easy to find and see. Time to up the ante. I went for Messier 27, aka NGC-6853, the Dumbbell Nebula. I was pleasantly surprised to find it. It may be one of the brightest, but other than the Ring Nebula, I have never really found ANYTHING of note with my old setup. I was, however, a little stretched to consider the blob to have a dumbbell shape. Looked more like a bowtie to me and kind of blobby in the middle too. But I saw it, yay!

My new best friend, Messier 57 aka NGC-6720, the Ring Nebula was my next stop. My view certainly wasn’t as detailed as the NASA image 😛 but it was definitely a doughnut/ring shape.

Astronomy Photo of the Day, June 5, 2013, NASA.

Next I went for NGC869 and NGC884, a double cluster. Unfortunately, I only found one of the clusters, and I’m not sure which one. No matter, moving on! I slid over to M81, Bode’s Nebula. Wasn’t in a good position with some hazing, and a stupid tree (!), so thought I would jump a bit. One of my favorite stars in the sky is Antares, mostly because it constantly seems to be twinkling and almost changing shades of red, orange and yellow. It’s easy to spot, and right now is hanging out near Saturn. I haven’t been able to resolve the light blue star next to it (Antares B), but the haze and neighbourhood light pollution might have something to do with that (or I just don’t know what I’m doing!).

Messier 23 and Messier 18, both double clusters, were easy to see when I slewed to them, which is nice for a change. I’ll have to go back to look at them again — one definitely seemed to have swirls in the patterns, I think 23, but my notes weren’t as detailed as they should have been. The Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula were too low on the horizon and lost in ambient haze, but I thought I would try for Messier 17, the Omega Nebula to finish things off. I didn’t see much that looked like a nebula though, so those are going to take more work for me to figure out what I’m supposed to see. It’s supposed to be pretty bright, but can’t swear to it by me!

A highly enjoyable evening, although I need to do some better planning in the future with maybe 4-5 clear targets in mind to find and study. My app comes with info on all the objects, and some of the big ones have audio to listen to as well as a couple of screens of text. A great resource in lieu of taking a book with me.